Daniel Auderer, the former Seattle police officer who was fired in July after he was heard on body camera footage joking and laughing about the death of a Northeastern graduate student, has filed a $20 million lawsuit against the city of Seattle. His claim alleges wrongful termination and personal and mental harm as a result of the public release of the footage and ensuing investigations into his conduct.
“Seattle [Police Department] leaked false information concerning wrongfully initiated disciplinary proceedings as well as my personal information, including my home addresses,” Auderer’s claim, filed July 25, reads. “[Seattle Police Department] then wrongfully terminated me. This was retaliatory at least due to my union leadership.”
It’s unclear what “false information” the claim is referring to or why Auderer, the vice president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, believes his position impacted the disciplinary decision. Joel Ard, the lawyer representing Auderer in the lawsuit, could not be reached for comment.
Auderer was fired July 17 by Seattle Police Department, or SPD, interim Chief of Police Sue Rahr after an investigation determined that he violated the department’s professionalism policy when he laughed and joked about the death of 23-year-old Jaahnavi Kandula, a graduate student at Northeastern’s Seattle campus, who was killed when a police cruiser struck her in January 2023.
The officer’s remarks, made the day after Kandula’s death and during a phone conversation with the president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, were caught on body camera footage that SPD uploaded to YouTube in September 2023.
The recording showed Auderer saying that Kandula was “a regular person” and had “limited value” before realizing his body camera was on and turning it off.
In a disciplinary action report describing the outcome of SPD’s investigation into Auderer’s actions and disciplinary hearings, Rahr said Auderer’s comments were “derogatory, hurtful and damaging to community trust” and emphasized that Auderer had violated the professionalism policy several times throughout the course of his employment with SPD.
Auderer lists Sept. 11, 2023 — the day SPD made public the body camera footage that recorded his callous remarks — as the date the alleged damages occurred. He claims to have suffered personal reputation harm, wrongful termination, mental pain and suffering and wage loss as a result of the wrongful termination and footage release.
Auderer and his representatives from the Seattle Police Officers Guild have argued that the former officer was laughing at the “absurdity” of the situation and intended for the conversation to be private. Auderer has also said he was mocking lawyers who could be litigating the case.
In a September 2023 statement to Seattle’s Office of Police Accountability, which investigated Auderer for his remarks, Auderer wrote that he is “willing to accept any reasonable discipline [SPD’s] accountability partners and the chief of police wish to hand down.”
A spokesperson for SPD declined to comment on the lawsuit due to ongoing litigation.
